I would not want to insult my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North in that way.
There is a cynical side to the Government’s approach to devolution and it goes like this: “You devolve powers because you devolve responsibilities, but you don’t devolve the funds to actually undertake them.” The Government want to contract Whitehall but they are not going to devolve the money to the English regions; they are going to devolve the responsibilities and then say to the various local bodies concerned that they are responsible for the failure to deliver at the local level.